Month: October 2009

The Warriors take the court this Halloween eve against the Suns in hopes of erasing the frightening memories of their season opening loss against the Rockets. Those looking for a truly terrifying last-minute Halloween costume might want to consider dressing up as Corey Maggette’s long-range jumper.

Meet the new Warriors, same as the old Warriors. There were moments in their opening night 107-108 loss to the Rockets when I was fooled into thinking things had changed. Nelson started two bigs to protect the paint, Stephen Curry distributed the ball and ran perfectly executed fast breaks, Anthony Randolph bounced off the walls and refused to quit on any play. But then came the halfway mark of the third quarter. Anthony Randolph came off the floor — never to be seen again — and Corey Maggette assumed the power forward position. Anyone who watched more than one or two games last season knows how this story ends. The Warriors have the potential this year to play a different style of basketball. But just because they can play a different style doesn’t mean they will.

Around 5:30 Tuesday evening — roughly 24 hours before the Warriors tip off their 09-10 season — the Bay Bridge snapped. All the Warriors can do now is hope it’s not an omen. The Warriors, like the Bridge, have suffered nearly two decades of neglect in the wake of abrupt catastrophes. Many with the best intentions have tried to bolt, lash, or bracket assorted pieces to hold the Warriors together. Despite their best efforts, the creaks and cracks of stress continue to show. There are occasional encouraging signs — the basketball equivalent of a successful retrofitting or the patching of a few pot holes — but the fundamental damage remains, creeping outwards. The Bay Bridge won’t be truly safe until the old one is torn down, replaced by an entirely new construction. And the Warriors won’t be truly competitive until Chris Cohan and those he has enabled are tossed aside, like twisted scrap.

With the 09-10 season about to tip off, it’s time once again for that annual exercise in crystal-ball reading: the win-loss prediction. There are so many variables that come into play with basketball records — injuries, trades, feuds with coaches, rookie development or lack thereof — that efforts at game-by-game predictions are unlikely to be much more successful than simply picking a number between 0 and 82. The last two years I’ve tried an intermediate approach — assigning records against teams. Two years ago, I was one game off with a pick of 49 wins. Last year, my pre-moped crash pick of 41 wins was off by a mile. This year, I’m guessing 36 wins.

Thoreau once wrote that “good poetry seems too simple and natural a thing that when we meet it we wonder that all men are not always poets. Poetry is nothing but healthy speech.” For long stretches Thursday night against a gutted Hornets team, Stephen Curry’s play was poetry. It was simple, crisp, effortless, and beautiful. The three quarters in which he logged heavy minutes were a near textbook illustration of what you’d hope for from a motivated, selfless, cohesive team. And with Curry, Morrow, Ellis, and Turiaf slashing, dishing, and running, it looked so natural that it the idea that this team would play any other way briefly seemed hard to grasp. But then reality would sneak back in — the Hornets missing their three best players (including two big men), Stephen Jackson sitting in a suit on the bench, and CJ Watson occasionally taking control of the offense — to remind us that the Warriors’ basketball usually reads far more like Where’s Waldo than Whitman (or Wooden, if you prefer).

Many Warriors fans curse the dreaded gimmicky small ball line-ups — four guards and a center — Nelson has been known to send onto the court. Tuesday night against the Lakers, the Warriors tried a gimmick at the opposite end of the spectrum. The team’s “big” experiment — starting Randolph, Turiaf, and Biedrins across the front line — failed to produce big results, and ended with the Warriors in a major first quarter hole. It wasn’t entirely unexpected, given that we were fielding two shooting guards, a power forward, and two power forward/center tweeners. Just as going too small doesn’t work, the Warriors momentarily appeared to go too big (of course, if Randolph ever develops a consistent jump shot, look out). But when Keith Smart backed off his triple towers in favor of two big men, everything changed. The Warriors protected the basket and did a nice job cleaning the glass. Our shooters spaced the court, driving lanes opened, and the team played some of its most competent basketball of the preseason. Of course, much of it was against the Lakers’ third string (and about-to-be-cut string), but these days I’ll take my positive signs wherever I can find them.

Tuesday night’s match-up against the Lakers is shaping up to be the preseason’s most interesting game. Not only do we get the Jackson-Kobe rematch, Keith Smart will command the Ws’ biggest line-up for the first time. With Ronny Turiaf joining Biedrins and Randolph in the front court, along with Ellis and Jackson in at the guards, the Warriors will go 6-10, 6-11, 6-10 (or 7-0, if you believe Randolph’s assessment of his height), 6-3, and 6-8. Will all those inches translate into defensive stops and rebounds? Stay tuned. Until then, a few preseason stats to chew on.

In most Warriors’ seasons, there’s almost always a “business as usual” moment when the optimism of the early year, the fresh faces added to the mix, and the talk of new strategies all fall away — to be replaced by the largely hopeless, listless, and/or undisciplined basketball we’ve suffered through for most of the last decade and a half. Usually that moment comes in January, with a long road trip, an injury, or the cumulative weight of stubborn reliance on unproductive rotations. It’s far too early to predict business as usual again this year — there are still wide-open questions about who will play what, when, and for how long — but you’d be forgiven for getting a sinking feeling in your stomach following this weekend’s loss against the Kings.

In the Book of Luke, Jesus tells the story of a man with two sons. One son, looking for greener pastures, demands his share of his still-living father’s inheritance and heads off for foreign lands. He blows all the money on a non-stop party and eventually finds himself stuck in a dead-end job herding pigs. Not liking his lot in life, the son returns home, repents his mistaken ways, and throws himself at his father’s mercy. The father waives off the prostrations, welcomes the son back with open arms, and throws a feast. The other son, dutifully trudging along all these years, resents the special attention heaped on his wayward brother. The father tells him to quit being so up-tight and celebrate the return of his left-for-dead sibling. Don Nelson turned to this story to welcome Stephen Jackson, the prodigal son, back into the Warriors’ fold on Tuesday. It was an apt reference — except for the fact that the stories have almost nothing in common other than initial demands for cash. Jackson hasn’t repented, the Warriors don’t appear to be throwing a party upon his return, and the moral of the story isn’t one of forgiveness and humility but resentment and arrogance. Nelson is relying on the wrong source material for his references — he’d have much better luck with Shakespeare. Comedy? Tragedy? Take your pick.

The Warriors had a new coach Monday night in LA. Sadly, the results were a little too familiar. After a high-scoring, up-tempo first half filled with nice ball movement and scrappy defense, the team fell apart in the third quarter with Keith Smart at the helm. The Warriors looked like they had all the answers in the first half. But the second half was a cruel reminder of the questions still swirling around this team.